MSE News: Pensioners hit by further HMRC tax code errors

Pennywise

dori2o wrote: »

Thats funny, I've answered about 30 calls today in just short of 5 hours.

The phones are manned from 7.45am til 8pm mon to fri, and 7.45 am til 4pm on Saturdays, plenty of time available for you to phone.

You may have to wait in a queue, but then so does everyone else at the minute. If you're unwilling to do that, then tough.

"In 2010/11 only 48% of calls received by HMRC were answered"

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2011/08/hmrc-slammed-by-treasury-committee-260752/

The reason HMRC can't answer their phones and can't answer correspondence within sensible timescales is the sheer volume of mistakes they make causing people to contact them repeatedly. How many calls and letters are because of earlier mistakes that need to be corrected or because promised corrections/changes just never happened? If they improved their error rate, there'd be far less need for people to contact them, thus the phone lines and letter answering delays would be drastically reduced.

I'm now on my third formal complaint for a single client. This has followed several phone calls and letters before I started making complaints. The reason was simply to get tax code letters and student loan notices sent directly to a client instead of me as their agent because client now does their own payroll and submissions. Simple you would have thought! Two years after my first letter, I've just received 3 more such notices, despite a letter from a complaints manager 3 months ago to confirm that all addresses on the systems had finally been corrected.

chrismac1

They are not under-staffed at all in my view. Too many of them are unable or unwilling to do the simplest things at the first time of asking. So instead of simple tax matters being resolved in one phone call or letter, it ends up being 5 or 6 calls, 3 or 4 letters and possibly Complaint cases and Tribunals to boot.

Management are utterly dismal. I think the Coalition ministers realise just what a mess it is, but so far the treacle of Whitehall has grabbed their feet.

Pennywise

chrismac1 wrote: »

Management are utterly dismal.

And don't expect improvement any time soon now that Lin Homer is the new chief executive.

She previously presided over years of chaos at the UK Border Agency and was Chief Returning Officer in Birmingham presiding over electoral chaos and being described as having "thrown the rule book out of the window" by the Election Commissioner.

With such a fine track record, she seems the ideal person to continue HMRC's years of chaos.

As usual, keeping the job within the same old gang. The idea of hiring someone who may be competent is just too risky.

John_Pierpoint

Wot not the Child Support Agency
or going a bit further back the vehicle licensing at Swansea?

Seriously though the basic rules for organisation are:
Analyse.
Eliminate.
Simplify.
and only then think about reorganising and automating.

But with the number of vested interests and pet projects, not to mention the huge number of legal changes required, it would take a war or revolution to get anything significant done.

As "taxation" gets outsourced (ie PAYE & VAT and now green taxes). The muddle and mayhem gets worse - I have recently had Photo Voltaic panels installed on my roof. This involved me spending a few days strengthening the roof and 3 guys spending 6 hours grafting to install the panels and associated electrical upgrade.

However wading through the massive tax subsidy administration, in my case sub contracted to British Gas, it is taking far longer and involving much more decision making to be c0cked up.
I am beginning to wonder what proportion of the population actually produces anything in this country, as against the proportion that produces nothing or "administers" the non productive "systems" involved.

The first taxation of pensions dates back to the 1600's according to the simplification proposals, which in themselves are tinkering round the edges.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/ots_review_of_pensioners_tax_060312.pdf

[If you are a pensioner the above document could be used as a check list, for you to make sure you are being treated correctly by all the rules that effect senior citizens]

John_Pierpoint

dori2o wrote: »

Thats funny, I've answered about 30 calls today in just short of 5 hours.

The phones are manned from 7.45am til 8pm mon to fri, and 7.45 am til 4pm on Saturdays, plenty of time available for you to phone.

You may have to wait in a queue, but then so does everyone else at the minute. If you're unwilling to do that, then tough.

"Work smarter not harder"

As a rule of thumb it is ten times cheaper to administer an on-line system, rather than a phone system, though a phone system should be five time cheaper than a snail mail system.

Mind you all the figures require the job to be done right first time.

I can email my bank via a secure link.

I can even email my pretty awful local authority and get a "case number" for my query/instruction.

I can telephone HMRC and get "triaged" by a call centre (in Cumbria?) and told someone will phone me back [...........three days later].

When am I going to be allowed to communicate electronically with HMRC ?

Pennywise

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

When am I going to be allowed to communicate electronically with HMRC ?

But they don't want you to as that would really expose their mistakes and slow service.

At the moment, they can get away with shoddy service by claiming that they didn't receive snail mail, and claiming not to have records of phone calls (or disputing what's been said on the phone). To get a transcript of a phone call is like pulling teeth.

If they allowed electronic communication, there'd be a written record of what you've told them and they wouldn't be able to wriggle out of their responsibility for their errors and for ignoring what they've been told. At the moment, they use their usual trump card of blaming the taxpayer/employer as the default and rely on people not having "proof" of notification to HMRC.

Why do you think they're no longer allowed to sign for receipt of documents handed over at a tax office counter? It was too embarrassing for them to have to admit the sheer number of returns etc that they lost in their own internal systems. Likewise they don't sign for special delivery and recorded delivery items.

They won't start accepting electronic communication for SA and PAYE until they've got their house in order - the political repercussions of being forced to admit to even more errors and delays would be suicidal for their management.

hugheskevi

As a rule of thumb it is ten times cheaper to administer an on-line system, rather than a phone system, though a phone system should be five time cheaper than a snail mail system.

Based on my experience, a high proportion of calls I make to HMRC end up with 'you will have to write to us about that.'

I am deeply suspicious at such times, as whilst there are some things that HMRC protocols demand be done in writing, there have been a number of times over the last decade where this was not the case and the best solution was to keep calling until you got an operator who knew what they were doing and made the change over the telephone rather than rolling out the 'you have to write' response to end the call if they didn't know how to do something.

So in HMRC's case, I suspect their phone system saves less money than in other organisations

Kirri

Can anyone point me in the right direction, couple of queries on this, am trying to help someone else out, I don't have a pension myself so have never looked into them and am a complete pension novice, I didn't even realise that pensions were taxed on receipt.. anyway..

I am guessing that private pensions are referred to on tax calculations as PAYE income, is that correct?

Is it normal to have just received a 09/10 underpayment tax calculation now in 2012? Why is this so delayed? and is this part of the same big problem this thread was about for the year before as well?

I remember some underpayments were written off the other year, in what cases did that apply? I am not suggesting this should be before anyone jumps on me, but the calculation is wrong anyway so I am having to correct that in writing.

Anything else I should be aware of?

I find these people so unhelpful when have dealt with mistakes on my own records before, they took 18 months to pay me back plus the phone calls are so expensive and the waiting time is outrageous, I don't know how they are allowed to continue to be so incompetent.

Pennywise

Kirri wrote: »

Can anyone point me in the right direction, couple of queries on this, am trying to help someone else out, I don't have a pension myself so have never looked into them and am a complete pension novice, I didn't even realise that pensions were taxed on receipt.. anyway..

I am guessing that private pensions are referred to on tax calculations as PAYE income, is that correct?

Is it normal to have just received a 09/10 underpayment tax calculation now in 2012? Why is this so delayed? and is this part of the same big problem this thread was about for the year before as well?

I remember some underpayments were written off the other year, in what cases did that apply? I am not suggesting this should be before anyone jumps on me, but the calculation is wrong anyway so I am having to correct that in writing.

Anything else I should be aware of?

I find these people so unhelpful when have dealt with mistakes on my own records before, they took 18 months to pay me back plus the phone calls are so expensive and the waiting time is outrageous, I don't know how they are allowed to continue to be so incompetent.

Yes, occupational pensions are taxed via PAYE so they will show as PAYE income. State pensions aren't shown as PAYE income as they are never taxed at source.

You need to work out why the underpayment arose. Is it the first year that the pension was paid, is there any other new source of income in that year? If so, when and who told HMRC about it? If no-one told HMRC when it first started, then you can hardly blame them for not issuing the right tax codes at that time - they aren't mind readers.

For a new state pension (i.e. reaching state pension age), HMRC are told directly by the pensions service. For a new occupational pension, the paying company should likewise tell HMRC of the commencement. You need to find out if and when HMRC was told about the new source of income. You won't get anywhere with an ESC claim if neither you, nor the occupational pension scheme told HMRC about the start of the pension.

You will have to do a bit of digging around past paperwork and asking questions of the pension firm, etc., to discover exactly what information was given to HMRC and when. You can also use a Freedom of Information request to get information from HMRCs own files as to what and when they were told.

AirlieBird

Pennywise wrote: »

You can also use a Freedom of Information request to get information from HMRCs own files as to what and when they were told.

Point of order: No personal information will ever be released through a Freedom of Information request. That is not the purpose of FoI legislation. A Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act is the correct legislation to use.